Of course the Beatles had to make an appearance in this blog. Undeniably the most influential bands of the rock era, they took the musical world by storm, having gradually built their reputation over three years from their formation in 1960. They hold a rock-solid place in the hearts of most people of my generation and of many people since. But which song to choose from a canon so replete with the sublime?
I have gone with a song so utterly exemplary of the Beatles sound and feel, from their early heyday, and positively dripping with their youthful exuberance and melodic virtuosity. Written by Lennon and McCartney in the basement of Jane Asher’s parents’ house in Wimpole Street, London; recorded at Abbey Road’s studio two; and released in the UK on 29th November 1963, it’s I Want To Hold Your Hand. It sold more than a million copies on advanced orders alone, on the back of the success of She Loves You, and became the group’s first US number one, kick-starting the British Invasion of America.
Of all the televised versions of the song (notably on the Ed Sullivan Show, with the famous introduction “Here they are…the Beatles!”), I found this version from the Morecambe and Wise Show in 1964. Played live, it’s absolutely brilliant. Lennon’s and McCartney’s voices are constantly switching between unison and harmony, and there is a wonderful interplay between Lennon’s riffs and George Harrison’s subtle guitar fills. And throughout, of course, they just look so damn good together; it’s a delight to watch.
Niccolò dell’Arca (c. 1435–1440 – 1494) was an Italian Early Renaissance sculptor, about which little is known except for his possession of a sublime skill in the art of sculpture.
His Compianto sul Cristo morto (the Mourning, or Lamentation, of Christ) is a life-size group of six separate terracotta figures lamenting in a semicircle around the dead Christ, in the Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna. Lamentations were commonly depicted in Renaissance Europe, it being the thirteenth of the Stations of the Cross. Here, the pain of Jesus’s friends, as he is taken down from the cross, could not have been expressed with more intense pathos. Sorrow digs into their faces, forever frozen in anguish.
More than 600 years after they were made, these fragile, now colourless terracotta statues continue to move and surprise visitors to the church who often don’t know about the church’s prized but untrumpeted possession. It’s a universal and timeless grief the figures express. The only peaceful figure of course is that of Christ who looks serenely asleep on a decorative scalloped coverlet. Each of the other figures’ dramatic pathos is intensified by the realism of the facial details.
It’s uncomfortable viewing, of course, due to the nature of the scene, but you know these Renaissance artists; they had a remarkable capacity for depicting pain and suffering, all part and parcel of the concepts embodied in the Christian religion. The anguish is stark, but the cause of the anguish becomes the focus for the Renaissance viewer: the dead Christ and the implications of that death for mankind. Check out the image details to fully appreciate Dell’Arca’s artisanship.
Sergei Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights, also known as The Montagues and Capulets, comes from his ballet, Romeo and Juliet. It’s an emotionally charged piece of music, with strong horns and woodwinds layering over a powerful melodic line played by the strings. Prokofiev’s dark and brooding passages send chills up the spine and create a wonderfully dark atmosphere, presumably to express the tension between the rival families of the Montagues and Capulets. No wonder it’s used in film and television so often; not least, of course, in the BBC’s The Apprentice.
Like the original play Romeo and Juliet, the story of Sergei Prokofiev and his famous ballet with the same title is filled with betrayal, struggle and untimely death. After the Revolution, Prokofiev had left Russia with the official blessing of the authorities, and resided in the United States, Germany, and Paris, respectively, making his living as a composer, pianist and conductor. He was lured back to the Soviet Union in 1936 with promises of lucrative commissions, but the bureaucrat who commissioned Romeo and Juliet was executed, as was the Central Committee flunky who approved the ballet’s original happy ending (Prokofiev had originally changed Shakespeare’s tragic ending but this evidently did not go down well with the Russian authorities!). The authorities then exiled Prokofiev’s first wife to the Gulag, and in 1938 confiscated Prokofiev’s passport, determining that he needed “ideological correcting” from too much Western influence.
Despite all this interference, however, what comes down to us today is an iconic piece of musical drama, with Dance of the Knights being the standout piece. We watch it here performed by La Scala Milano, as the Capulets strut their stuff on the dance floor. Great costumes too!
All the dance greats of the twentieth century, from Fred Astaire to Michael Jackson, have cited the Nicholas Brothers as huge inspirations for their craft. Fayard and Harold Nicholas were born (in 1914 and 1921 respectively) to musician parents who played with the regular band at Philadelphia’s famous Standard Theater. Consequently, the brothers, who would sit in the theatre whilst their parents were working on stage, got to witness most of the great Afro-American performers, jazz musicians and vaudeville acts of the times.
The older brother, Fayard, taught himself how to dance, sing, and perform by watching and imitating the professional entertainers on stage and first performed alongside his sister Dorothy as the Nicholas Kids. Later, Harold joined, and when Dorothy opted out, they became the Nicholas Brothers. They performed a highly acrobatic and innovative dance technique known as “flash dancing”, incorporating elements of tap, acrobatics and ballet.
As word spread of their dancing talents, they became famous in Philadelphia and their career really took off in 1932 when they became the featured act at Harlem’s Cotton Club, performing with the orchestras of Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. Harold was 11 and Fayard was 18. Spotted by Sam Goldwyn, they were invited to Hollywood and their movie career began.
Their performance in the musical number Jumpin’ Jive (with Cab Calloway and his orchestra), featured in the movie Stormy Weather, is considered by many to be the most virtuosic dance display of all time. It’s certainly wonderful to watch.
Johannes Vermeer is rightly considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age, but it wasn’t always so. Although modestly recognised in his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, he quickly slipped into obscurity after his death, and it remained that way for nearly two centuries, until his rediscovery in the 19th century by French art critic, Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who was so impressed when he came across Vermeer’s View of Delft that he spent years seeking out other paintings by this virtually unknown artist. Today, Vermeer’s paintings are of course lauded as masterpieces and worth mega-millions; should you ever come across his painting The Concert, which was stolen in 1990 and remains missing, do grab it — it’s worth about $200M.
Although “launched” by a cityscape and particularly famous for a tronie (Girl with a Pearl Earring), Vermeer painted mostly domestic interiors. As his biographer put it: “Almost all his paintings are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women”.
A prime example is today’s choice, The Milkmaid, painted around 1658 and showing a domestic kitchen maid, suitably attired and pouring milk into an earthenware pot (and thus possibly making bread pudding, judging by the amount of bread on the table). Vermeer’s careful design (there were several revisions) resulted in a masterpiece of light and shadow, colour, contours, and shape. He restricts his palette mainly to the primary colours of red, blue, and yellow, and the pigments are rich and vibrant — Vermeer is known to have used only the very best, and most expensive, pigments. Above all, the skill of the artist has wrought a remarkably realistic scene, with quirky but authentic features such as the foot warmer, lower right, and the hanging basket, upper right.
Sir Noël Coward: playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, debonair charm and what Time magazine called “a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise”. We’ve met Coward before in this blog, due to his involvement with Brief Encounter. His songs have amused and charmed me for years: witty and knowing wordplay, precisely enunciated and put together with an extraordinary degree of scansion and unity, and often with a killer title: Don’t Let’s Be Beastly To The Germans, Could You Please Oblige Us with a Bren Gun?, I Went To A Marvellous Party…
Typical of his gloriously sardonic songcraft, is this week’s glimpse of the sublime, Don’t Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington. In the Thirties, at the height of his powers, Coward was apt to receive a constant stream of letters from women begging him to find parts for their respective daughters in whatever he happened to be staging next. As Coward himself put it:
“Some years ago when I was returning from the Far East on a very large ship, I was pursued around the decks every day by a very large lady. She showed me some photographs of her daughter – a repellent-looking girl – and seemed convinced that she was destined for a great stage career. Finally, in sheer self-preservation, I locked myself in my cabin and wrote this song – “Don’t Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington”.
The slapdown is exquisite. Enjoy its deft lyrics and jaunty tune, below. However, you won’t hear the fourth verse because this was pulled from the song as it was considered by the Lord Chamberlain too offensive for the prim 1930s Britain!
Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington, Don’t put your daughter on the stage, The profession is overcrowded And the struggle’s pretty tough And admitting the fact She’s burning to act, That isn’t quite enough. She has nice hands, to give the wretched girl her due, But don’t you think her bust is too Developed for her age? I repeat Mrs Worthington, Sweet Mrs Worthington, Don’t put your daughter on the stage.
Regarding yours, dear Mrs Worthington, Of Wednesday the 23rd, Although your baby May be, Keen on a stage career, How can I make it clear, That this is not a good idea. For her to hope, Dear Mrs Worthington, Is on the face of it absurd, Her personality Is not in reality Inviting enough, Exciting enough For this particular sphere.
Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington, Don’t put your daughter on the stage, She’s a bit of an ugly duckling You must honestly confess, And the width of her seat Would surely defeat Her chances of success, It’s a loud voice, and though it’s not exactly flat, She’ll need a little more than that To earn a living wage. On my knees, Mrs Worthington, Please Mrs Worthington, Don’t put your daughter on the stage.
Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington, Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Though they said at the school of acting She was lovely as Peer Gynt, I’m afraid on the whole An ingénue role Would emphasize her squint, She’s a big girl, and though her teeth are fairly good She’s not the type I ever would Be eager to engage, No more buts, Mrs Worthington, NUTS, Mrs Worthington, Don’t put your daughter on the stage.
[Song normally ends here, but here’s the refrain that fell foul of the Censor]
Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington, Don’t put your daughter on the stage, One look at her bandy legs should prove She hasn’t got a chance, In addition to which The son of a bitch Can neither sing nor dance, She’s a vile girl and uglier than mortal sin, One look at her has put me in A tearing bloody rage, That sufficed Mrs Worthington, Christ! Mrs Worthington, Don’t put your daughter on the stage, or your son!
The Raven is a narrative poem by Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1845, famous for its dramatic, Gothic quality. The scene is set from the beginning: the unnamed narrator is in a lonely apartment on a “bleak December” night, with little more than a dying fire to light the room, when he hears an eerie tapping from outside his chamber door. Into the darkness he whispers, “Lenore,” hoping his lost love has come back, but all that could be heard was “an echo [that] murmured back the word ‘Lenore!’ ”. The tapping persisting, he opens the window whereupon the mysterious raven enters the room and perches atop a sculptured bust above his door.
The man asks the raven for his name, and surprisingly it answers, croaking “Nevermore.” The man knows that the bird does not speak from reason, but has been taught by “some unhappy master,” and that the word “nevermore” is its only response. Thus, he asks a series of questions, all eliciting the stock response at the end of each stanza.
Poe was very interested in expressing melancholy in poetic form. As he wrote in Graham’s Magazine in 1846: “Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” – the answer, of course, Death. And when is Death most poetical? “When it most closely allies itself to beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world”. Hence, the poem is about the despair of a bereaved lover, and Poe’s use of the raven — that bird of ill-omen – does little to suggest that a happy outcome is forthcoming! Perhaps the raven stands for the narrator’s subconscious as he struggles with the concepts of death and finality.
There is a lilting rhythm in play; it’s melodic as well as dramatic (and since you ask, it’s in trochaic octameter, with eight stressed-unstressed two-syllable feet per lines). There is frequent use of internal rhyme, and much repetition of rhyming around the “or” sound (Lenore, door, lore, nevermore).
Who better to narrate this great poem than the prince of horror himself, Vincent Price? Here he is in wonderful Gothic form, narrating, indeed acting, this dark classic…superb.
London in the Sixties was, famously, “swinging”, with much of the music and fashion influenced by the Mod subculture. Mods had their roots in the London of the late Fifties where a small group of fashionable young guns came to be known as modernists because of their penchant for modern jazz. By the Sixties, the movement had become the dominant, and now pluralist, cultural force of the times, had broadened its horizons, and had accumulated certain identifying symbols such as the tailored suit, the Parka, and the motor scooter. Mod music, meanwhile, had become a diverse mix of soul, R&B, ska, and blues-rooted British rock.
The early sixties had seen a clash of this new culture with the so-called “rockers”, a rival subculture centred on motorcycling, leather and 1950s rock and roll, which led to the infamous South Coast brawls of “mods and rockers”, and the ensuing “moral panic” of the Establishment. But by the mid-sixties, British rock bands, such as the Small Faces and the Who, were adopting mod fashion and attitude.
This week, I give you a sublime dose of mod sound in the form of the Who’s Substitute. Natty threads, swanky attitude, and above all a killer song from the band’s one true songwriter, guitarist Pete Townshend. Townshend wrote the song having being inspired by a line in Smokey Robinson’s Tracks of my Tears: “Although she may be cute, She’s just a substitute”.
The song has a great bassline, amply supplied by John Entwhistle and assisted on drums by amiable loon Keith Moon, guitar chops courtesy of Townshend and a suitably louche vocal from Roger Daltrey. The lyrics are cleverly wrought, though it’s no surprise that the line “I look all white but my dad was black” was altered for the more racially sensitive American market (to “I try walking forward but my feet walk back”, which was presumably thrown together at the last minute to cries of “yeah, that’ll do”).
Whatever, the finished product is a great example of stylish mod sound from the original “cool Britannia”…enjoy!
You think we look pretty good together You think my shoes are made of leather
But I’m a substitute for another guy I look pretty tall but my heels are high The simple things you see are all complicated I look pretty young, but I’m just back-dated, yeah
Substitute your lies for fact I can see right through your plastic mac I look all white, but my dad was black My fine-looking suit is really made out of sack
I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth The north side of my town faced east, and the east was facing south And now you dare to look me in the eye Those crocodile tears are what you cry It’s a genuine problem, you won’t try To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by
Substitute me for him Substitute my coke for gin Substitute you for my mum At least I’ll get my washing done
But I’m a substitute for another guy I look pretty tall but my heels are high The simple things you see are all complicated I look pretty young, but I’m just backdated, yeah
I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth The north side of my town faced east, and the east was facing south And now you dare to look me in the eye Those crocodile tears are what you cry It’s a genuine problem, you won’t try To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by
Substitute me for him Substitute my coke for gin Substitute you for my mum At least I’ll get my washing done
Substitute your lies for fact I can see right through your plastic mac I look all white, but my dad was black My fine-looking suit is really made out of sack
If I ever get to Chicago, one of the first things on my list will be to see the iconic masterpiece of American art that is Edward Hopper’s oil on canvas, Nighthawks, housed at the Art Institute of Chicago. It has been there ever since the Institute bought the piece from the artist, for the sum of $3000, just a few months after its completion in 1942.
The picture shows a late-night, sparsely populated downtown diner, somewhere in New York. Many people have speculated and tried to work out where the diner actually was but it is far more likely to be a composite of various joints from around the artist’s home patch of Greenwich Village, Manhattan, cobbled together in Hopper’s imagination.
Hopper and his wife Jo kept meticulous notes about his work, and they provide a rare glimpse into this oft-unconsidered aspect of the artist’s life: the planning and thought behind a planned work. This excerpt, in Jo’s handwriting, describes Nighthawks:
“Night + brilliant interior of cheap restaurant. Bright items: cherry wood counter + tops of surrounding stools; light on metal tanks at rear right; brilliant streak of jade green tiles 3/4 across canvas–at base of glass of window curving at corner. Light walls, dull yellow ocre [sic] door into kitchen right.
Very good looking blond boy in white (coat, cap) inside counter. Girl in red blouse, brown hair eating sandwich. Man night hawk (beak) in dark suit, steel grey hat, black band, blue shirt (clean) holding cigarette. Other figure dark sinister back–at left. Light side walk outside pale greenish. Darkish red brick houses opposite. Sign across top of restaurant, dark–Phillies 5c cigar. Picture of cigar. Outside of shop dark, green. Note: bit of bright ceiling inside shop against dark of outside street–at edge of stretch of top of window”
The picture was clearly not thrown together, and indeed for all this attention to detail, the finished artwork adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It exudes a sense of loneliness, of separation, of eery silence and thus disquiet. Who are these people? What stories of quiet desperation (since we somehow suspect that the protagonists are not of a happy and stable disposition) have brought them to this late-night rendezvous? Nighthawks allows the viewer’s imagination to fill in the blanks.
Are hymns capable of being a sublime art-form? Or does the Devil have the best tunes? Well, certainly, we might dismiss the archetype of the modern folk-derived “worship song”, feebly crooned to the accompaniment of a strummed guitar, but how about the contents of the classic Hymns Ancient & Modern from the heyday of Victorian hymnody?
Many of these paeans come across to modern ears as somewhat plodding and, peppered as they so often are with that staunchly God-fearing lyricism laid down by the likes of Charles Wesley, strictly for die-hard Methodists.
However, most people tend to connect with at least one hymn from their youth that stirs their spirit, be it Abide With Me, I Vow To Thee My Country, or that other hardy perennial, Amazing Grace. One such hymn that I contend is capable of sublime heights is Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, the wonderful marriage of Hubert Parry’s 1888 music written for Repton School in Derbyshire and words taken from John Leaf Whittier’s 1872 poem, The Brewing of Soma.
The title of that poem may appear odd; the “soma” of the title was a sacred drink in the Vedic religion with hallucinogenic properties and which was used by devotees in an attempt to experience divinity (cf. the “ideal pleasure drug”, soma, of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World). Whittier’s point is that one doesn’t need an external agent to experience divinity; all one needs is to listen to the “small, still voice” inside and to live the sober, selfless lives as practised by the Quakers to whom he was aligned.
Be that as it may, it’s when words and music combine in the hands (or throats) of a decent choir that the music comes alive. Joe Wright’s film, Atonement, has an acclaimed five-minute tracking shot depicting war-torn Dunkirk during which we begin to hear a choir of soldiers, in a battered bandstand, singing Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. An effective and ironic poignancy arises from the juxtaposition of the bleak and desperate scene with the rousing majesty of the hymn.
In that spirit I present a lovely version of the hymn, sung excellently by the choir of the Abbey School, Tewkesbury, set, in similar juxtaposition, to footage from the Great War.
Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways; reclothe us in our rightful mind, in purer lives thy service find, in deeper reverence, praise.
In simple trust like theirs who heard, beside the Syrian sea, the gracious calling of the Lord, let us, like them, without a word, rise up and follow thee.
O Sabbath rest by Galilee, O calm of hills above, where Jesus knelt to share with thee the silence of eternity, interpreted by love!
Drop thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease; take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire thy coolness and thy balm; let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm.
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